The People & Environment Bloghttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au
People's relationships with Australia's natural and built environmentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 00:31:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngThe People & Environment Bloghttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au
Domestic to industrialhttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/27/domestic-to-industrial/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/27/domestic-to-industrial/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 02:52:07 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3869]]>Water enables so many tasks in the world that sometimes, we can forget how essential it is. At the domestic level we use water to drink, cook with, clean ourselves and our clothes and to keep our gardens growing. Industrially, water is a vital input to many industries but perhaps the most well recognised is the agricultural industry. This post takes a look at two objects, relating to the home laundry and the development of large scale agriculture, as a means of exploring this spectrum of domestic to industrial.

Clothes pegs

We often don’t think too much about domestic objects that we routinely use. They’re there, they make our life easier, but that’s about it. The humble clothes peg is just such an item. It’s just a thing we use to get through our daily life, helping us to make sure we have clean presentable clothes to face the world in. You might also think that clothes pegs are so simple and so obvious that they have been around forever. They haven’t. Clothes pegs are quite new to human history.

A selection of laundry pegs from the NMA’s collection. Photo by George Serras.

The Museum’s pegs came from the Bothwell Museum, a small museum near New Norfolk in Tasmania, which was devoted to domestic items. When it was forced to close, the Museum acquired a number of objects, including these pegs. Of the pegs shown here, we can identify two properly. The largest peg was made by Mrs One-Eye Brown, a hawker/traveller in Tasmania in the 1930s. Her pegs were crafted by hand from willow, and were part of Mrs Brown’s attempts to get enough food together to eat in the days before social security. The next largest peg is a dolly peg, were made from sassafras wood. It came from the Pioneer Peg factory at New Norfolk, which opened in 1929. It was the only peg factory in Australia and operated until 1975. According to the local newspaper, its closure was prompted by equal wages for women and imports from China, see: http://www.newsnn.net/2011/10/peg-factory-poser.html.

There are three main hypotheses about the origin of pegs. The first is that they are of Shaker origin. The Shakers were a religious group in colonial America. Part of their faith in God involved what we might now call minimalism. Shakers did not eschew material things, but nor did they value accumulation, and what they did make had to be functional, durable and beautiful. Shaker furniture is now highly collectible. If you’d like to read more about the Shakers and their furniture, click here: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shak/hd_shak.htm.

A second possibility is that pegs derived from sailing traditions, where sailors pegged items onto the rigging. The third theory of origin is that pegs were made by travelling gypsies around Europe, and they formed a way to trade for things that they needed. Mrs Brown’s experience would seem to support the ‘gypsy’ theory, and reminiscences about Mrs Brown suggest that her behavior conformed to the stereotype.

The only certain and dateable evidence of the invention of the clothes peg is the patent granted to David M Smith of Vermont in 1853. While there was an earlier patent granted, the details have been lost in a fire at the patent office. So, David Smith’s invention of the two halves clothes peg operated with a spring is usually claimed as the first. However, it doesn’t answer the question of where he got the idea from. Was it is his own inspiration, or did he merely patent something he had seen and known about for some time? Either way, the clothes peg remains a relatively recent addition to the domestic sphere, along with laundry powder, scrubbing boards, washing machines and clotheslines.

Clothes pegs are part of a broader history of laundry. The most essential part of any laundry day is access to water. For the majority of history, this water had to be carried by hand. Water is heavy! A litre of water weighs one kilogram, so getting enough water to do the laundry was hard labour in itself. It also explains why for centuries, women have preferred to take their washing to the water rather than the water to the washing. This is why the introduction of major water infrastructure, like the next object, was so important.

The next object is at the opposite end of the scale from the clothes pegs, being both massive and industrial. It is the remains of original Goulburn Weir, including a length of the dam superstructure, a gate and two piers. Our photos show the weir parts being transported to the National Museum, and give a sense of their size and bulk.

The weir is Australia’s oldest irrigation diversion structure. It was built between 1887 and 1891 by the Victorian Water Supply Department to divert water from the Goulburn River for agricultural and domestic use in northern Victoria.

At the time it was built, Goulburn Weir was considered an engineering marvel. Visitors came from all over Victoria to look at the steady, bright electric light generated by the hydro-electric turbines. People enjoyed the play of light on the water spray at night, and the weir became the site of recreational and social activities. The weir was widely reported in the colonial press, both locally in Victoria and in other colonies. The weir was so well known that in 1913, the Commonwealth of Australia chose it go on its new currency. Lake Nagambie, created by Goulburn Weir, has developed as a recreational venue for water-skiing and rowing regattas.

While a first for Australia, the Goulburn Weir is simply one more example of a nine thousand year old pattern of water control. Control of water was the foundation for the Egyptian, Mespotamian, Indic, Chinese, Andean and MesoAmerican civilizations over the last 9000 years. Most of this water use was for irrigation (MacNeill, Under the Sun, p. 120). Well known environmental historian John MacNeill remarked that dams are symbols of power. More specifically, he pointed to a mentality among leaders that used massive water engineering projects to lend themselves political credibility. He writes that:

‘A great deal has changed in the hydrosphere because of men who felt much the same way that Churchill did [namely, that it would be ‘fun’ to make the Nile start in a turbine]. Lenin, Franklin Roosevelt, Nehru, Deng Xiaoping and a host of lesser figures saw water in much the same way…They did so because they all lived in an age which states and societies regarded adjustments to nature’s hydrology as a route to greater power or prosperity. And they had unprecedented technical means at their disposal. Since 1850 hydraulic engineers and their political masters have reconfigured the planet’s plumbing. They did so to accommodate the needs of the evolving economy, but also for reasons of public health, geopolitics, pork barrel politics, symbolic politics and no doubt to satisfy their vanity and playfulness’ (p. 150).

MacNeill went onto note that while change was the desired outcome of hydrological manipulation, sometimes they didn’t always get the change they wanted. Setting aside any social ramifications, there are a whole range of unintended ecological consequences from large scale water manipulation, many of which are slow to emerge and hard to reverse. For example in Australia, which has one of the most variable hydrological cycles, river regulation seeks to stop variability. This is helpful for creating stable and predictable conditions for crop growth. For native species which have evolved to cope with variability, it is not. The removal of variability from river systems endangers the integrity of whole vegetation complexes.

This fundamental tension between the desire for permanency and stability and the actual fluctuations of water has been a significant driver of water policy in Australia. The Goulburn Weir was approved following severe drought and its water was used to supply local towns for domestic purposes, and to support the agricultural industry. This was a major boost to the social and economic growth of the area. The public reception of Goulburn Weir is indicative of twin beliefs that were widespread in the nineteenth century; that technology lead to progress and that there were no limits to growth.

Colonial Australians believed to a much greater extent than contemporary Australians that there was no environmental issue that couldn’t be solved with human ingenuity. The nineteenth century was an era of significant engineering developments which in many ways made the modern world. Clean, distributed water is one of those developments. The Goulburn Weir set in motion a change to our social and ecological world that continues on.

References

McNeill, J.R., Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World, WW Norton and Co, New York and London, 2000, paperback edition in 2001.

Filed under: Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/27/domestic-to-industrial/feed/0new Goulburn_Weir_005kcarmanbrownTwo young women on wash day, Queensland, c1925. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_1_126875_Grace_and_Annie_boiling_clothes_washing_copper.jpg weir 6weir 5weir 4weir 3weir 2weir 1The weir under construction, November 1889. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Goulburn_Weir,_Victoria..JPG) Introduced to nativehttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/20/introduced-to-native/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/20/introduced-to-native/#commentsFri, 20 Mar 2015 05:28:39 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3847]]>The history of water includes the history of gardening. Different species have different water needs, reflecting their place of evolution. When European settlers arrived in Australia full of images of lush meadows and verdant trees, based on their lived experience in many cases, a kind of cognitive dissonance happened. The old environmental reality and their new reality didn’t match up. This gap has been slowly closing over time, and we can see this in action through the history of gardening. These objects, gardening books and pamphlets, chart a transition in thinking about vegetation and water in Australia.

The first group of books come from the library of a wealthy pastoral family, the Faithfull’s of Springfield. Springfield evolved from a 518-hectare land grant given to William Pitt Faithfull in 1828 up to 3183 hectares, with ownership remaining in the one family. William Pitt Faithfull established the Springfield Merino Stud in 1838 with ten rams selected from the Macarthur Camden Park stud. The stud evolved slowly over the years until the early 1950s when, under the management of Jim Maple-Brown, a scientific approach to wool-growing was adopted.

According to William’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Springfield House was built in the early 1840s, and by 1858 its garden was well known for its ‘English flowers of every shade in perfection’.’ The garden was Mary Faithfull’s passion. This interest in the garden was transmitted down to the couple’s children. How else would her son come to exhibit 100 chrysanthemums at Goulbourn’s first chrysanthemum show in 1890? Two years later, their daughter won second prize for her showing of roses and stocks.

Mary ordered the majority of her seeds and plants from England each year. It’s very likely that these English garden books helped her to make selections, although catalogues from nurseries were also vital. Sadly, no catalogues are in the Springfield Collection, but the books that the Museum holds include some of the best known garden books of the nineteenth century.

A selection of garden books from the Springfield Collection. The English Gardener is the very plain brown covered book. The thicker green gilt book is Beeton’s Book of Garden Management. Photo by Sam Birch.

The English Gardener by William Cobbett was first published in 1829 and ran to multiple editions. The Faithfull’s had the 1838 edition and it belonged to Miss CM Faithfull. The other very well known books were Paxton’s Flower Garden, and Beeton’s Book of Garden Management. Paxton ran to three volumes, and the Faithfull’s had volumes one and two. Cobbett and Beeton’s books are large, closely printed books conveying advice in great detail on garden design, layout, management and cultivation.

On Christmas Eve, 1881, The Goulbourn Evening Penny Post published an extensive description of Springfield. If we compare this to the contents pages of Beeton and Cobbett, we see almost complete congruence. Hedges, a shrubbery and lawn, gravel walks, a greenhouse, there’s even a fish pond. Similarly the plant selection could easily be a list drawn from either author. In the shrubbery were Portugal and English laurels, chestnut, walnut, hazel, junipers, berberris, and holly. Flowering plants included carnations, verbenas, phloxes, antirhiniums, fox gloves, petunias, peonies and of course, ‘gay’ roses. Extensive development of the property’s water resources had occurred to enable all this horticultural effort. There are only two native species mentioned, the kurrajong which was planted in the shrubbery, while acacia was relegated to acting as a windbreak.

Later visiting journalists noted how immensely English Springfield was. A very long article in the Town and Country Journal from 1905 went into great depth on the breeding programme at Springfield for sheep and horses, the distribution of water from the Mulwaree River, and went on to remark that ‘The old home, now the residence of Miss Faithfull, is a delightful, old-fashioned house, surrounded by finely-wooded grounds, and with nice gardens, studded with choice shrubs, and bright, in the spring time with a profusion of flowers. A part of the brick walls of the building is ivy clad, and altogether it presents a truly old-world appearance’.

The same imagery still applied in 1933, when The Farmer and Settler described Springfield. ‘There are two homesteads on the estate, one, the original residence, now occupied by Miss Faithfull, and the other, Mr. A. Lucian Faithfull’s home, built over forty years ago. The whole estate resembles an old-world park. The home steads are surrounded by belts of beautiful pines that defy the sweeping winds of the tablelands, and there Is a delightful garden, seven acres in area, crowded with marvellous flowers, fruit trees, shrubs and evergreens.’

Springfield’s garden represents an immense amount work and devotion by generations of the Faithfull family. If you read their gardening books, you can’t help but feel exhausted by the amount of digging that is recommended, although how much they themselves laboured is not immediately clear. (It is difficult to imagine corseted ladies trenching to three and half a feet, as recommended by Cobbett.) In some reports of the agricultural or horticultural shows, the gardener is listed in brackets as an addition to the family member.

Springfield also represented an almost complete substitution of native plants, used to variable water availability, with exotic and highly water dependent species. Reading Paxton gives some insight into the mentality behind this. Joseph Paxton was the head gardener at Chatsworth House, in the Peak District in Derbyshire. His books were intended for wealthy gardeners who could maintain greenhouses and gardening staff to cosset exotic imports. Included in the volumes held by the Faithfull’s were images of Australia flora, such as these plates from Paxton.

Blandfordia flava. Photo by Sam Birch.

Sturt’s Desert Pea, Clianthus formosus. Photo by Sam Birch.

These were presented simply as another exotic that you could furnish your greenhouse with. Exoticness and unusualness were the key goals that marked one out as a gardener of taste and distinction. The preface to Volume One of Paxton said that the book was intended as a tool for growers ‘to ascertain the real Horticultural value of the numberless so called varieties with which the lists of dealers are crowded.’ Volume Two included plants from thirty seven different parts of the globe, a clear indication of the links between horticulture and imperial expansion of the nineteenth century.

Springfield was exactly the specimen based, exotic kind of garden that Jean Galbraith spent her life trying to educate people away from. Our second group of gardening materials were part of her own library, and are a marked contrast to the Springfield books. These are simple pamphlets, compared to the highly polished Springfield books, all focused on growing or appreciating native plants and written to appeal to anyone.

A selection of pamphlets owned by Jean Galbraith. Photo by Sam Birch.

Jean Galbraith was one of the most popular garden writers in twentieth century Australia. She commenced writing ‘for money’ when she was a child, regularly winning the newspaper children’s page best letter for which she was thrilled to receive 2/d, two shillings and sixpence.

Jean’s grandparents arrived in Gippsland in 1878 from Beechworth, a mining town. They found the moral atmosphere of Beechworth, with its forty two hotels, an undesirable place to raise their growing family. The family ran a dairy enterprise, primarily making cheese. They lived on the ‘wrong side of the river’ and too far away from a good bridge to sell the more perishable cream and milk. Jean’s father took an eleven acre parcel of land instead of money as his inheritance, and continued to live on the farm. Most of the family had an interest in gardening and the natural world. Her education was disrupted due to illness, but this clearly did not stop her passionate interest in the world around her.

Looking south from Tyer’s Lookout over the heavily cleared Gippsland plains. Photo by Kylie Carman-Brown.

Jean lived her whole life in the family home, near Tyers in Gippsland. Her first writings for the new Australian gardening magazine The Garden Lover, starting in 1926, featured her local landscape, and she wrote consistently about this for ten years. She was friends with McDonald of the Argus, who regularly mentioned her in his column. After that, the garden her family established there and which she looked after until ill health forced to her move to a nursing home, became the focus of the column. Highlights from that column were collected together in a book called Garden in a Valley published in 1939, and reprinted in 1985. Garden in a Valley established Jean’s reputation as a gardener and botanist amongst the broader Australian public.

Botany requires attention to detail; an eye for both what is general and what is particular about the plant in question. The Museum holds her microscope, a custom made gift to her from friends in the Field Naturalist’s Club during the 1950s. The wooden mount was modified so she could fit it in a suitcase for travelling, such as her trip to Western Australia in 1964. She also had a folding magnifying glass, a gift from her mentor’s, Mr HB Williamson, son. Microscopes enabled many advances across multiple fields of science, including botany and medicine.

Jean always tried wherever possible to see the plants she was writing about. This entailed lots of travel, usually facilitated by friends or by public transport given that Jean never learnt to drive. Her early forays were based on local trips around the family farm. She would pick quantities of wildflowers and take them to Melbourne to participate in wildflower shows. As one of the founders of the local branch of the Field Naturalist’s club, she participated in many local trips. As her reputation grew, she was asked to take on increasingly bigger projects culminating in the Field Guide to the Wildflowers of South Australia. Jean donated to the National Museum some of the camping gear that she used on her field trips, including her sleeping bag, water bottle, and cooking equipment.

Her writings about native plants, especially in the early years, consistently emphasised their beauty and delicacy. For example, she described the Satin Everlasting or Helichrysum leucopsidium as ‘a stretch of silken embroidery, flecked with pink, frilled with rose’. In the same article, she mentions the ‘creamy foam’ along riversides and hollows, the flowers of sweet bursaria. (Garden Lover, Feb, 1926, p380). Given her location in Gippsland, among the wetter locations of Victoria, it is not surprising that Jean regularly talked about riverside or marsh plants in her early writings. In April 1926 she wrote evocatively of Epacris microphylla or coral heath.

‘Never was a flower more truly named’, she said, ‘the white waxy bells so short as to be almost cups, crowd like coral over the bushy plants, a gleam of fairyland on earth’. The May 1926 edition focussed on highly water dependent ferns found high in the Gippsland hills. Some columns were simply accounts of bush walks and what beauties she found. In January 1927 she said:

…to know their full beauty, visit the stream sides, where they grow in mingled luxuriances of leaf and flower; where tree ferns mix with gums and maiden-hair brushes the water; where shy brown lyre-birds may still be seen by quiet watchers, and the silver air is tangled in mutable loveliness of scent and song.

She gave instructions on how to lift, transport, and grow on the native plants she discussed in her column, encouraging gardeners who might otherwise have stuck to more familiar introduced species to get to know the diversity of indigenous plants. She also fostered an appreciation of their diversity and their suitability to the different climates, and therefore water availability, that gardeners found themselves in. While she rarely speaks about watering, other writers in the Garden Lover regularly talked about it in regard to the roses, phlox, or other introduced species which they were advocating.

As her writing evolved, her message became increasingly about conservation. In her preface to Wildflowers of Victoria she combined both these messages:

The robe of the countryside is there for you to enjoy. It is a green robe, worked in bright colours that change from month to month and from place to place: embroidered with white and lilac in the gullies and bright colors on the hills; sown with jewels in the grassland, and flung in crumpled folds of white daisies for a thousand acres in the Mallee. The only rents in it are those we have made. Perhaps more of its beauty might remain if, years ago, we had realised how easily it is destroyed.

Filed under: Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/20/introduced-to-native/feed/1???????????????????????????????kcarmanbrownA selection of garden books from the Springfield Collection. The English Gardener is the very plain brown covered book. The thicker green gilt book is Beeton’s Book of Garden Management. Photo by Sam Birch.Blandfordia flava. Photo by Sam Birch.Sturt's Desert Pea, Clianthus formosus. Photo by Sam Birch.A selection of pamphlets owned by Jean Galbraith. Photo by Sam Birch.Looking south from Tyer's Lookout over the heavily cleared Gippsland plains. Photo by Kylie Carman-Brown.Epacris microphylla. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Epacris_microphylla.jpg) A photo finish…http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/17/a-photo-finish/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/17/a-photo-finish/#commentsTue, 17 Mar 2015 05:58:13 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3769]]>After six months on show, the Spirited horses are returning to their stables and paddocks for a well-earned rest. From 11 September 2014 to 9 March 2015, over 52,000 people visited the Spiritedexhibiton, enjoying a stream of associated tours, talks, holiday programs and events. If you missed the exhibition, National Museum photographers George Serras and Jason McCarthy captured Spirited from every angle so that we can continue to explore, share and reflect on Australia’s horse story.

The Spirited exhibition was arranged thematically by place, with the manufacture and use of vehicles, saddlery, clothing, and breeds of horses particular to each place explored in detail, across a range of time periods. From the station, to the farm, the road, town, track, through the city, on the battlefield, the open range, in the show ring and on the sporting field. While each area was distinct, visitors drew connections as they moved from place to place, following views and flows across the gallery – city and country, race tracks and communities, farms and agricultural shows, work and sport.

The brumby video wall greeted visitors entering the ‘Spirited’ exhibition. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.

‘On the station’ exhibits in ‘Spirited’. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.

‘On the road’, ‘In the town’ and ‘At the track’ exhibits in ‘Spirited’. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.

‘Through the city’ and ‘On the battlefield’ exhibits in ‘Spirited’. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.

Exhibits in the ‘On the open range’ theme. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.

Exhibits in the ‘In the ring and on the field’ theme. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.

As visitors wandered from place to place, many took the opportunity to contemplate Australia’s horse stories, and share their memories with the Museum and other visitors. The feed trough, saddlery, racing, milk cart and show ring exhibits were a few that seemed to generate plenty of comment and discussion. Here is a selection of some of those moments around the exhibition:

Although Spirited is now being packed up, and the objects will return to storage or generous lenders, many of the stories will remain available online through the exhibition website and ‘Horses in Australia‘ project website.

Feature image: A view across the middle of ‘Spirited’. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.

Filed under: Horses, Museum practice, Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/17/a-photo-finish/feed/0nma-47587803-092-wm-vs1_wjenniferwilson707In front of the feed trough were a selection of horse feed options for visitors to smell. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.Large projection screens provided archival footage to give some of the large objects context in the space, like the double furrow plough. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.The sculpture 'Silent Conversation', by artist Harrie Fasher, offered a central focus point for the exhibition's question: ‘how has the connection between horses and humans shaped life this country?’ Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.The discovery of specimens of portions of heart wall, aorta and pericardium, believed to be from legendary Australian horse Phar Lap proved a popular part of the exhibits of horse anatomy specimens in 'Spirited'. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.Horse breed associations provided information and images to the Museum allowing visitors to explore the variety of horse breeds and types in Australia. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.The life-size chestnut gelding model that stood out the front of Quail's Saddlery in Cooma. Now affectionately known as 'Winnie' to Museum staff, he was a big attraction in the exhibition, on display after his face lift. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.One of the work benches and a selection of tools used in Quail's Saddlery in Cooma. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.A digitised version of the 'Coachbuilder Book of Designs' in front of an 1870s Double Abbott -style buggy. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.The 1866 and 1867 Melbourne Cup trophies are very different to those awarded to today's champions. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.This exhibit had visitors asking "is it real?" The answer, "Yes!" Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.Visitors enjoyed the 'Foundation training' film, featuring Paul McGreevy and Sierra. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.The chance to investigate different types of bits with the 'In the mouth' interactive. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.Horse and human mannequin forms, representing endurance champions Brook Sample and Brookleigh Excalibur, supported material donated by Brook and Leigh Ann Sample. The life-like pose was inspired by a photograph taken of Brook and Excalibur during the 2013 Quilty Cup. Both photos taken by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.The Pony Club wall featured photos from pony clubs around Australia, and housed an iPad for visitors to scroll through content from the 'My Pony Club' website. Photo by Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia.Flying lantern horses directed visitors to the family space. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.In the family space, a small 'NMA Bakery' cart was displayed in front of a full-size 1940s Newcastle and Suburban Co-operative Society bakery cart. Photo by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.The everything of waterhttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/10/the-everything-of-water-2/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/10/the-everything-of-water-2/#commentsTue, 10 Mar 2015 01:42:39 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=1602]]>This blog post introduces a series of essays that explore the meanings of water in Australian history and contemporary life. When I joined the Museum last year, I volunteered in the People and the Environment curatorial team. I wrote a series of thematic essays that applied ideas I’d developed in my PhD project to better understand water-related objects in the National Historical Collection. My PhD thesis explored the internationally significant Gippsland Lakes, Australia’s largest inland waterway, in southeast Victoria. It was a blend of cultural history, hydrology, environmental science and ecological psychology. I will publish one of my essays each week, and I hope you enjoy them!

Introducton: The everything of water

Q: What is water?
A: Everything.

In recent years, a research area called embodied water has been developed. It’s a way of demonstrating how much water was used in the making of objects of daily life, from the screen you are reading this on to the lunch you are contemplating having. In his book Virtual Water, Tony Allan estimates that a breakfast consisting of espresso, eggs, bacon and toast, fruit and milk has used 1100 litres, or about three bathtubs, on its way to your plate. The cotton shirt and jeans you’ve thrown on account for at least another 10 000 litres, and the car you’re about to start to rush to your meeting is an average of 67.5 cubic metres (67500L) of water? [1] So before you’ve even left the house, you are wrapped in the residue of 78 600 litres of water.

That’s one way of demonstrating how entwined water is with our existence, likely to appeal most to the mathematically inclined. If you’re visually inclined, this image will be more appropriate.

There’s nothing like the ultimate bird’s eye view to remind ourselves that we live on the blue planet. The Earth is a rare and precious gem in the universe, precisely because of the predominance of water. Only a few generations of people have had the privilege of knowing this fact. The first (black and white) image of the earth from space was beamed back from space by Lunar Orbiter I in 1966, but the more famous image is Earthrise, taken on Christmas Eve, 1968. (Click here to see the photo and read an account by the astronaut who took the picture: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/earthrise.html ) It became the cover shot of Life’s 100 photographs that changed the world.

Images of Earth from space show how clearly all life on our planet is inescapably dependent on water. We evolved from it, and our species spends nine months suspended in it before we are born. We need at least one litre of fresh clean water per day simply to survive. We dream about it, play in it, fight over it, worship it and write poetry about it. We use it make things, transport ourselves by it and it suffuses our languages with a rich lexicon of water metaphors.

In my set of essays (which will become part of a broader ‘Water in Australia’ web feature) I take a thematic approach to water. In addition to this introduction, there are seven thematic pieces of writing. The themes derive from research undertaken for my PhD, which combined insights from environmental history, hydrology and psychology for its theoretical framework.

From psychology the main influence came from Gestalt therapy, a form of humanistic psychotherapy developed in 1940s and 1950s. ‘Gestalt emphasizes the person in their current situation, and how they are shaping and being shaped by their environment.’[2] It emphasizes the importance of relationships and processes. The hydrological cycle is a process, and we are eternally interacting with it. An alternative definition of Gestalt therapy noted that a person is ‘the physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional, interpersonal and spiritual aspects of an individual, and which are considered inseparable from the individual’s environment, history and culture’ in a therapeutic setting.[3] Echoing the gestalt emphasis on the intertwined whole, my PhD research explored the history of water in the physical, emotional, spiritual, economic and social everyday lives of European migrants to Australia, and used as a case study the history of the Gippsland Lakes catchment in southeast Victoria from its colonisation in 1838 up to the turn of the nineteenth century.

The themes developed for my set of essays are an echo of this gestalt inspired approach and seek to demonstrate, through the selection of objects from the Museum’s collection, the interconnected and seamless way water has threaded through all aspects of Australian settler societies. In alphabetical order, the themes are:

None is inherently more important than any other, and for the record, this is by no means the only approach to the history of water. There are so many histories of water related subjects these days, reflecting its significance to all people through all time.

From hydrology, the main influence came from scholars who tracked the evolution of scientific knowledge about the hydrological cycle, from the ancient Greek philosophers up to the present. Would it surprise you to learn that there have been five different models of the hydrological cycle put forward by Europeans, each reflecting the concerns and beliefs of their age? The table below very simply describes them.

The People and the Environment curatorial team have done substantial work in the Murray-Darling Basin area. A number of these projects document the cusp between the quantitative and the ecological models. You can see some of these on the People and the Environment website.

My essays on water will soon be available via a new Water in Australia web feature. As this part of the People and the Environment website grows, it will also include features on the relationships of Indigenous people to water. Those stories are essential to understanding human patterns of engagement with water in Australia, and it would take a different historian than me to do them justice. In choosing objects for my essays, I have sought less well known objects and given more emphasis to places outside the Murray-Darling Basin. This is to complement the existing online features and collection highlights, and to highlight the breadth of the Museum’s collection.

3. For an example of gestalt applied to an environmental topic, see Clare Cooper Marcus’ now seminal book from 1995 in the field of design,House As A Mirror Of Self: Exploring The Deeper Meaning Of Home, Nicolas-Hays Inc., Lake Worth, Florida, 2006.

50 years ago women were particularly prominent in the field of geology, yet they struggled to gain recognition and acceptance among their male counterparts. Today, the gender gap is still a concern for Australian science. Leading Australian scientists explored the reasons for this in 2011 in The Conversation. Despite outstanding talent and hard work women scientists experienced prejudice and discrimination in the workplace, if they were lucky enough to gain employment. Determination and a thick skin were prerequisite for any woman then aspiring to a profession in the sciences.

By all accounts, Dr Joplin was a woman who made things happen – for herself, for her chosen field of geology, and for others. Her tenacity and skill saw her make a significant and enduring contribution to the field of geology during the mid-20th century – a time when women, even those with academic achievements which outshone their male peers, struggled to forge careers outside of the home.

On the difficulties of her early research career, Dr Joplin later recalled:

‘When I started in the early [19]20s girls were not supposed to go wandering about with maps and sacks of rocks, but if you were really interested in your work you had to… Girls suffered also in that men on the academic staff took some of the brighter boys on expeditions and the girls missed out. This is why I often took a group with me when I visited a site. Boys and girls studying geology nowadays go on mixed excursions and no-one thinks a thing about it, but once it would have been considered scandalous if a chaperone, usually the professor’s wife, were not invited along also.’[1]

Dr Germaine Joplin (left) with students on a geology excursion.Image courtesy the Joplin Family.

Germaine Joplin was drawn to rocks from a young age. As a child ‘her favourite outing was not to the beach or to the theatre or to the zoo but to the mining museum to look at the rocks’.[2] At school she excelled, winning awards for English, geography, geology and science: ‘Being so good at her subjects every Speech Day she used to be laden down with book prizes’. [3]

Her mettle was tested when, following iritis, she lost sight in one eye. Her studies for the School Leaving Certificate were put on hold for a year. Undaunted, after recovering she submitted an illustrated exercise book for her final course, ‘Practical Botany’, in 1925. Beautiful coloured drawings of flora, plant cell structures and soil compositions showcased Joplin’s attention to detail and artistic talent – skills she would later use extensively in her work as a geologist. Joplin’s subsequent geology publications featured hundreds of her illustrations – microscopic views of rock samples – still admired for their aesthetic quality and scientific precision in an age when digital cameras have replaced the hand-made.

Illustrations showing the structure of algae in Germaine Joplin’s ‘Botany’ exercise book, submitted for her School Leaving Certificate in 1925.Image courtesy the Joplin Family.

Illustrations of soil samples under the microscope in Germaine Joplin’s ‘Botany’ exercise book, submitted for her School Leaving Certificate in 1925.Image courtesy the Joplin Family.

Success at school allowed Joplin to take up geological studies at university at a time when few women went on to pursue tertiary study. As a student at the University of Sydney, she continued to produce work of exceptional quality, winning ‘virtually every available prize’. [4] Joplin graduated in 1930 with a Bachelor of Science and First Class Honours, the University Medal in Geology, the Science Research Scholarship and the Deas-Thompson Scholarship for Minerology.

Joplin chose to specialise in petrology, an area of geology that studies the origin, composition, distribution and structure of rocks. The branches of petrology correspond to the three different rock types: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. Much of Joplin’s research focused on igneous rocks, those formed by the cooling and solidification of volcanic lava.

After graduation Joplin was appointed Curator of the University’s geological museum, demonstrated in geology and continued her research and writing about the Hartley District. Her work gained international recognition when she was awarded the Junior International Fellowship in Science for the year 1933-1934 by the International Federation of University Women. This association aimed to show that ‘women could undertake university work and that it neither destroyed their character or their charm, and that women could hold their own in the professional world.’ [5] The Fellowship allowed Joplin to study petrology under Australian expatriate C.E. Tilley at Cambridge University in the U.K., where she was awarded her PhD in 1935.

Joplin returned to the University of Sydney with a ‘distinguished reputation for her achievements in petrology’ [6] however was only able to take up a temporary position as acting assistant lecturer in geology. Despite the lowly title, Joplin had almost exclusive responsibility for instructing students in igneous and metamorphic petrology. In addition to teaching she continued her research and had papers published in a number of scientific journals.

Geology classroom at the University of Sydney.Image courtesy the Joplin Family.

After five years in this position, in 1941 Joplin was awarded a Macleay Fellowship from the Linnean Society of New South Wales which enabled her to conduct petrographic study of the Cooma region in south-eastern New South Wales. This ‘pioneering research’ saw ‘Cooma and its metamorphic style [become] known across the world, described in international textbooks and [become] the basis for much subsequent investigation’, [7] and led, in 1950, to award of a D.Sc. (higher doctorate) from the University of Sydney for her thesis ‘On the question of interaction between primary granitic and primary basaltic magma under varying tectonic conditions’.

On her life at this time, Joplin later commented: ‘I seemed to be stuck in rocks and thought it was about time I learned something about the humanities. While teaching during the day I studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree at night and did also a diploma of social studies.’ [8] Joplin received her B.A. and Diploma of Social Studies that same year from the University of Sydney.

Dr Germaine Joplin ‘in the field’ with her notebook and geology hammer.Image courtesy the Joplin Family.

Juggling social work, teaching, and geological research in Sydney, Joplin decided to move to Canberra in 1951 to concentrate on geology with a job at the Bureau of Mineral Resources. The following year she accepted a permanent research post in the newly formed Geophysics Department at the Australian National University (ANU). Despite her great academic achievements, this was Joplin’s first permanent position.

Over the next 16 years at the ANU, Joplin supervised many PhD students, compiled chemical data on Australia rocks, became a Steward of University House, and wrote two important textbooks acclaimed for their contribution to the understanding of the chemistry and mineralogy of Australian igneous rocks (1964, twice reprinted) and metamorphic rocks (1968). Her indomitable spirit again prevailed when a fire in her laboratory in early July 1960 destroyed manuscripts, records, and a whole collection of rock specimens.

Joplin published numerous research papers and six books throughout her career. Her contribution to Earth Sciences was belatedly honoured in 1986 when she was awarded the prestigious W.R. Browne Medal for ‘distinguished contributions to the Geological Sciences of Australia’, as well as being made a Member of the General Division of the order of Australia (AM). She was never elected to the Academy of Science, even though she was recommended several times. Joplin passed away on 18 July 1989.

The National Museum holds a collection of laboratory equipment used in the study of geophysics by Dr Germaine Joplin, Professor John Jaeger and Professor Mervyn Paterson who worked at the Australian National University’s Department of Geophysics, in the then Research School of Physical Sciences, from the 1950s. Dr Germaine Joplin’s and Professor Mervyn Paterson’s research into rock physics during the 1960s underpins our contemporary understanding of the movement of continents. Joplin’s research used petrographic microscopes fitted with point-counting equipment for directly measuring the abundance of different minerals using rock thin sections.

This blog post was developed with contributions from Lisa Catt and Jennifer Moncrieff.

Filed under: Art, Landscapes, Science, Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/06/women-in-science-dr-germaine-joplin/feed/0GJheaderoakriderDr Germaine Joplin (left) with students on a geology excursion. Image courtesy the Joplin Family. Illustrations showing the structure of algae in Germaine Joplin’s ‘Botany’ exercise book, submitted for her School Leaving Certificate in 1925. Image courtesy the Joplin Family. Illustrations of soil samples under the microscope in Germaine Joplin’s ‘Botany’ exercise book, submitted for her School Leaving Certificate in 1925. Image courtesy the Joplin Family. Geology classroom at the University of Sydney. Image courtesy the Joplin Family. Dr Germaine Joplin ‘in the field’ with her notebook and geology hammer. Image courtesy the Joplin Family. J. Swift & Son x-y slide translation assembly for point counting studies, DYMO labelled ‘Dr. G Joplin’. National Museum of Australia. Women on wheels – blazing the trailhttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/06/women-on-wheels-blazing-the-trail/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/06/women-on-wheels-blazing-the-trail/#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 01:06:32 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3713]]>When Australian track cyclist Anna Meares collected her 11th world championship medal a week ago in Paris it was another remarkable victory in a stellar career. On International Women’s Day, it is worth remembering that Meares’ remarkable achievements rest on the shoulders of giants. Her success and international prominence would be unlikely had it not been for the courageous and pioneering work of thousands of female cyclists who battled prejudice and discrimination in their fight to race on Australian roads and velodromes.

For much of the 20th century, Australian women enjoyed few opportunities for competitive racing. They were mostly obliged to ride in women-only ‘exhibition’ events or at unofficial race meetings. Men often refused to race with women, either actively barring them from competition or mocking their endeavours.

It might seem like ancient history, but 50 years ago opportunities for female cyclists were almost non-existent. In the early 1960s, eighteen-year-old Margaret McLachlan caused a sensation at her local cycling club, Dulwich Hill by winning the club’s annual Ron Jacobs’ Memorial track event. She was the only woman in the race, and she followed this success with numerous wins in scratch races against men.

McLachlan organised a women’s race organised at Lidcombe Oval in Sydney in 1962 that attracted four entrants. At the same event, a group of men donned dresses and wigs and participated in a mock race that ridiculed their female counterparts.

In 1966, McLachlan became the first Australian woman granted an open racing licence, enabling her to compete in official events. A year later, the New South Wales Amateur Cycling Union revoked her licence, without explanation, and she was again restricted to club races. Seeking to be recognised as a serious cyclist and to raise the profile of women’s cycling, McLachlan began challenging long-distance records, breaking Joyce Barry’s almost 30-year-old Sydney to Melbourne record. Completing the journey in 36 hours and 33 minutes, McLachlan still holds the record today.

Margaret McLachlan in 1967. Australian Women’s Weekly/Bauer Media Limited. McLachlan was the first Australian woman granted an open racing licence, enabling her to compete in official events.

From the 1960s on, women’s racing slowly began to gain official recognition and status. Decades of hostility and suspicion of the place of women in competitive arenas began to fall away, albeit very slowly. State and national road and track titles were available from the 1980s and a women’s cycling event was first added to the Olympic program at the 1984 Los Angeles games. Women had to wait another four years, until the Seoul games in Korea, to compete in a track sprint event.

The Australian Institute of Sport gave female cycling a huge boost, with its high performance programs fostering talented female riders since the late 1980s, many of whom found national and international success. Australian cycling (and society) has come a long way since the Margaret McLachlan faced ridicule by her male club members. But the battle for equality isn’t over and women in all sporting endeavours still receive a disproportionately small share of the nation’s sporting resources.

Blazing the trail: just some of Australia’s great female road and track cyclists

Kathy Watt on her way to victory in the Individual Road Race event at the Barcelona Olympic Games, Spain 1992. photograph by Chris Cole, AllsportAt the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Kathy Watt became the first Australian – male or female – to win an Olympic cycling road race. She also won silver on the track in the three-kilometre Pursuit, becoming the first Australian woman to win an Olympic track medal.

Joyce Barry poses for her sponsors Malvern Star and the New South Wales Milk Board 1939, State Library of New South Wales, hood_22905After Joyce Barry contracted pneumonia at age 15, her doctor recommended cycling to aid her recovery. Trained by Australia’s leading male cyclist, Hubert Opperman, she developed into a powerful rider, 180 centimetres tall and weighing about 70 kilograms.During the late 1930s, Barry broke numerous cycling records, including the fastest ride from Sydney to Melbourne. In 1939,she set the world record for seven days of continuous riding by a woman, cycling 1107 miles (1771 kilometres) around a 35-mile (56-kilometre) lap course through Sydney.

Anna Meares strains as she starts the 500-metre time trial final at the World Track Championship in Poland, 2009. Newspix.Meares started competitive cycling at the age of 11. At 21, she joined the Australian Institute of Sport track cycling program and has become one of Australia’s most successful cyclists. She has achieved multiple world championship victories, Olympic and Commonwealth medals and is also a world, national, Olympic and Commonwealth record holder.

Billie Samuels, with her Malvern Star bicycle, is farewelled by supporters as she sets out to break the record for riding from Sydney to Melbourne, 1934 State Library of New South Wales, hood_04234 In May 1934, Billie Samuels, a diminutive 23-year-old Victorian, set the women’s record for riding from Melbourne to Sydney when she completed the journey in 3 days and 17 hours. A few months later, Samuels turned around and rode from Sydney to Melbourne, breaking Elsa Barbour’s 1932 record of 3 days and 7 hours.

Filed under: Cycling, Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/03/06/women-on-wheels-blazing-the-trail/feed/0women on wheels blog headeroakriderKathy Watt on her way to victory in the Individual Road Race event at the Barcelona Olympic Games, Spain 1992. photograph by Chris Cole, Allsport At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Kathy Watt became the first Australian – male or female – to win an Olympic cycling road race. She also won silver on the track in the three-kilometre Pursuit, becoming the first Australian woman to win an Olympic track medal. Joyce Barry poses for her sponsors Malvern Star and the New South Wales Milk Board 1939, State Library of New South Wales, hood_22905 After Joyce Barry contracted pneumonia at age 15, her doctor recommended cycling to aid her recovery. Trained by Australia’s leading male cyclist, Hubert Opperman, she developed into a powerful rider, 180 centimetres tall and weighing about 70 kilograms. During the late 1930s, Barry broke numerous cycling records, including the fastest ride from Sydney to Melbourne. In 1939,she set the world record for seven days of continuous riding by a woman, cycling 1107 miles (1771 kilometres) around a 35-mile (56-kilometre) lap course through Sydney.Anna Meares strains as she starts the 500-metre time trial final at the World Track Championship in Poland, 2009. Newspix. Meares started competitive cycling at the age of 11. At 21, she joined the Australian Institute of Sport track cycling program and has become one of Australia’s most successful cyclists. She has achieved multiple world championship victories, Olympic and Commonwealth medals and is also a world, national, Olympic and Commonwealth record holder. Newspix bsamuelCoffee and bushrangers in gold countryhttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/27/coffee-and-bushrangers-in-gold-country/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/27/coffee-and-bushrangers-in-gold-country/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 09:10:28 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3694]]>Anyone unlucky enough to have encountered me sans my morning coffee knows that this is when I’m at my most desperate, perhaps my most murderous. I feel deprived, entitled to what I believe is my just deserts, and I’ll stop at nothing to get it. By ‘it’ I mean coffee and I know I’m not alone out there.

So it was no surprise to learn that the popularisation of coffee drinking in Australia, way back in colonial days, closely aligned with the proliferation of that other breed of foolhardy desperados with whom coffee addicts seem to have a bit in common – bushrangers. I like to imagine that this newfound popularity was due to the beverage’s engagement in appeasing this problematic criminal element. Yet the truth of the matter is that bushranging and coffee drinking bourgeoned alongside each other as they were both spurred by the gold rushes of the 1850s, which attracted an influx of coffee-swilling migrants from Europe and America, and gold-thirsty bushrangers from near and far, to the colonies’ goldmining hotspots.

In New South Wales, the Lachlan Valley region was one such hotbed of gold-mining, bushranging and, seemingly, coffee drinking activity. Following the recent discovery of gold, mobs of bushrangers flourished in the area in the 1860s, with the small local town of Eugowra unexpectedly assuming centre-stage in their terrifying exploits. In 1862, nearby Escort Rock became the site of Australia’s largest gold robbery, while an attack on a nearby property, named Goimbla, only a year later proved an important turning point in the fate of one of the region’s most feared bushranger gangs.

On 19 November 1863, the Gilbert-Hall gang – at the time composed of Ben Hall (about 1837–1865), John Gilbert (about 1842–1865) and John O’Meally (1840–1863) – attacked Goimbla homestead by the cover of night. The property’s owners, David and Amelia Campbell, bravely resisted their assailants, killing O’Meally. The two gang leaders, Gilbert and Hall, fled the scene, but both turned up dead by May 1865 – killed by police fire. The local community rewarded the couple’s role in killing O’Meally, and effectively breaking up the gang, with gifts and a cash donation. Amelia, in recognition of the central role she played in the property’s defence and O’Meally’s death, was personally presented with a silver-plated coffee urn that bears the following inscription:

The ladies of Upper & Middle Adelong present this token of esteem to Mrs Campbell as an appreciation of her heroic conduct displayed during the attack at Goimbla by bushrangers on 19th Nov. 1863

It is an ornate, impressive piece, though I doubt it has ever been used for its basic utilitarian purpose. If it hasn’t, then it never will be, as after being handed down through a few generations, the urn and two other commemorative family heirlooms are now in the Museum’s holdings. Forming the Veda Hope collection, they tell a fascinating story – a much broader one than I’ve touched on here – and one which you can now explore through the dedicated ‘Amelia Campell’s coffee urn’ collection highlight.

As for Eugowra, it appears to have mellowed with age and settled into a quieter pace of life, though traces of its rich past remain. Located on the main street, in a quaint 1908 building, is the nostalgically named The Lady Bushranger café. It serves coffee to the parched, craving masses and continues the work of the colonial street vendors, who also arrived in the gold rush days and kept locals sated with pies and Cornish pastries. A seemingly banal reminder of times gone by, The Lady Bushranger nonetheless gets my blood pumping faster with that evocation of a fellow desperado, and the promise of a hot cup of coffee.

Filed under: Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/27/coffee-and-bushrangers-in-gold-country/feed/0LADY BUSHRANGE 2karolinakilianSilver coffee urn presented to Amelia Campbell, 1863. National Museum of Australia.Is Cycling Normal?http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/18/is-cycling-normal/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/18/is-cycling-normal/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 05:16:57 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3682]]>A month ago, the television game show Family Feud, set fire to the Twitterverse with this question: ‘What is something annoying cyclists do?’ The highest scoring categories, which the contests had to predict, including such gems as ‘Riding in the driving lane’, ‘wearing lycra’, and, my personal favourite, ‘everything’. You might argue with me about the extent that Family Feud is an barometer of social values in this country, but I fear that it might not be too wide of the mark!

I gave up reading online ‘debates’ (I use the term very loosely) about cycling a few years ago. While my rational self knew that the violent, hateful comments on such forums were not a representative sample of my fellow citizens, I simply found it too distressing to be reminded that people would even articulate such thoughts. Social media platforms have provided a megaphone for extreme opinions that I just do not need to hear. My head, however, is not in the sand. Sadly, as a keen cyclist, I am frequently reminded that some members of the community hold my chosen mode of transport in low esteem.

How did it come to this?

In response to the Family Feud provocation, I’m giving a talk this weekend at the National Museum of Australia in response to the question: “Is cycling normal?” I picked this title because the implication of the Family Feud question is that cycling is a fringe activity, illegitimate and out of step with regular society. My talk will explore the historical currents of today’s most contentious cycling issues: right to the road, red lights, helmet laws, MAMILS and how cyclists of all kinds have been represented in the broader culture. I will also look at some inspirational developments from around the world and suggest what we can do to shift the current debate so we can generate a little less heat and a lot more light.

Come along and join the discussion.

Is Cycling Normal? The past, present and future of cycling in Australia

Filed under: Cycling, Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/18/is-cycling-normal/feed/2Family FeudoakriderMaking ‘Silent Conversation’http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/16/making-silent-conversation/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/16/making-silent-conversation/#commentsMon, 16 Feb 2015 02:11:06 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3649]]>At the heart of the Spirited: Australia’s horse story exhibition is the question ‘how has the connection between horses and humans shaped life this country?’

Our research into Australia’s horse history has revealed many complex and profound human responses to horses. We also want visitors to consider the other side of that connection – how do horses think and feel about us?

At the centre of the exhibition is a meditation in steel on the horse/human bond – artist Harrie Fasher’s sculpture ‘Silent Conversation’.

‘Silent Conversation’ by Harrie Fasher, 2014.Photograph by Jason McCarthy and George SerrasNational Museum of Australia

The sculpture features two figures, one horse, one human, contemplating one another.

So how did ‘Silent Conversation’ come to be?

In 2013, when we were just beginning research on the Horses in Australia project, we came across a magazine article about artist Harrie Fasher, and her journey from professional equestrian to horse sculptor. Horses had always been Fasher’s passion. She grew up at Wilberforce near Sydney, and rode with her sisters and cousins. “All parents hope their child will grow out of having a crush on horses, but mine just got thicker and thicker,” she told Catherine McCormack. “I lived in this euphoric world of horse — I’d always be galloping and jumping in my mind.”

Fasher became a professional three-day eventer, until a major accident in 2003 left her with a broken pelvis and spinal injuries. Her grey horse Gallagher died. “I feel like one of us had to go, just the way we fell,” Fasher told journalist Elizabeth Fortescue. “I feel eternally grateful for that horse to have given his life for me.”

In the months the followed, Fasher realised her serious riding days were over. She decided to pursue art instead, beginning a degree at National Art School in Sydney. Enrolling in painting, she was soon drawn to the physicality of sculpture. ‘There is an energy created when you physically battle with an object’ she told Horsezone in 2011. ‘This energy becomes a whirlwind, it is really a bit of a rush.’

Fasher works intuitively, bending and welding steel rod to make her works, which often feature horses. She told Australian Country Style: ‘I tried to avoid it, but it is a part of who I am. I think my spirit is that of a horse, which is why it made sense to tell a narrative with the horse’s form. The horse is a symbol of power and strength and elegance, but it’s also fragile. That’s the juxtaposition I explore in my sculpture.’

Harrie Fasher and one of the horse mannequins used in the Spirited exhibition, 2014.Photograph by Jason McCarthyNational Museum of Australia

People and the Environment Head Curator Kirsten Wehner and I met with Harrie at the Museum late in 2013. We were keen to include one of her sculptures in the exhibition, and we talked about the works she had already created for a wide range of exhibitions, prizes and residencies. We discussed what has made the horse such a powerful presence in art, over many hundreds of years.

Following our meeting, we began to see a place for Harrie’s signature steel-rod linework in the suite of horse and human mannequins needed to support the saddlery, harness, vehicles and clothing featured in the exhibition. This involved realising the forms of specific horses, based on archival images, meticulous object measurements, and Harrie’s deep understanding of horse anatomy and movement. The mannequins were designed by Harrie, and realized by her and Thylacine Exhibition Preparation. Many of the exhibition’s visitors have commented that it seems as though the horses move as you walk around them, their forms are so dynamic and full of character.

The Springfield exhibit in Spirited, featuring mannequins made by Harrie Fasher and Thylacine Exhibition Preparation. Left to right, riding habit worn by Constance Faithfull, paired harness and landau carriage, hunting pinks worn by William Anderson and dress worn by Florence Faithfull. Photograph by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.

While the forms of real horses now had real presence in the show, there was still something missing – a central work that spoke to the unique qualities of both horses and people, and to the bonds that bridge across the differences between the two species. Early in 2014 we began talking to Harrie about a commissioned piece that would explore this relationship. We discussed a work that showed a horse and a person approaching each other, perhaps for the first time, perhaps part of the daily ritual of meeting together in the paddock or the stables. Harrie described going to collect one of her mares, who always shows a bit of spunk whenever Harrie goes to get her: the toss of her mane, a dash and a buck signalling her feisty independence, before she’ll trot down willingly. The piece needed to have something of that spiritedness in it, but also something of the generosity and willingness required on both sides to make the connection work.

Harrie worked up a number of ideas, and we to-ed and fro-ed with sketches and wire maquettes for a while, until she hit on the title, ‘Silent Conversation’, and then the idea of having the human figure squat down. At that point we knew she’d captured the balance and respectfulness of two very different creatures recognising each other’s strength, gentleness and curiosity about each other.

Harrie and assistant steel fabricator Nicole O’Regan then set to work to realise the sculpture at life-size. They spent hours in Harrie’s studio at Oberon, cutting, filing and bending the steel rod, and welding it into place. Harrie would then ‘sit’ with the sculpture for a while to see what was working and what wasn’t – and how her own body related to the horse’s body. Numerous times Harrie took to the two figures with an angle grinder, cutting away parts that were not true-to-form, and then rebuilding them with new rod. ‘It’s a battle of wills making a sculpture’ she told us. Drawing was a key tool in resolving difficulties, with quick sketches offering new ways to resolve ‘where the weight is in the figure, where the muscular structure comes into the form’.

The completed work arrived at the National Museum of Australia’s loading dock on a truck in early September 2014. Harrie arrived soon afterwards, and supervised the sculpture’s installation into the exhibition’s central hub – a white oval plinth framed by a white wall and archway. The effect was, for me, breathtaking. It felt as though the whole exhibition had finally been completed by this deep reflection on the mysterious bond that has connected horses and humans for millennia.

After install, Harrie returned home to Oberon to make her next major work, a two-headed rocking horse for Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea, and afternoons of sketching on horseback with her equine friends Evie and Dusty.

She also has her herd of sculptured horses, though they demand a little less attention. ‘I am still surrounded by horses’ she says, ‘but they are quiet, and don’t need rugging.’

In Canberra, visitors to the exhibition stand enthralled in front of ‘Silent Conversation’ – the latest addition to the Museum’s stable. It’s clear the work has touched a chord with people. Many stand and gaze at the two figures for a long time. Others walk around it, letting the lines of the two figures mix and merge with one another. I imagine many of them are remembering a similar moment of connection with a special horse from their own lives, and the ‘silent conversation’ they’ve shared with each other.

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What are your responses to Harrie Fasher’s sculpture ‘Silent Conversation’? You can leave your comments below.

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Some of this text has also appeared in the November 2014 issue of Horses and People magazine.

Filed under: Art, Horses, Uncategorised]]>http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/16/making-silent-conversation/feed/0Considering the horse formmarthasear‘Silent Conversation’ by Harrie Fasher, 2014. Photograph by Jason McCarthy and George Serras National Museum of Australia Harrie Fasher and one of the horse mannequins used in the Spirited exhibition, 2014. Photograph by Jason McCarthy National Museum of AustraliaThe Springfield exhibit in Spirited, featuring mannequins made by Harrie Fasher and Thylacine Exhibition Preparation. Left to right, riding habit worn by Constance Faithfull, paired harness and landau carriage, hunting pinks worn by William Anderson and dress worn by Florence Faithfull. Photograph by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.Harrie Fasher and horses Evie and Dusty 2014 Photograph by Margaret Hogan, Red Moon Creative Discoveries in Januaryhttp://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/05/discoveries-in-january/
http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/2015/02/05/discoveries-in-january/#commentsThu, 05 Feb 2015 02:39:20 +0000http://pateblog.nma.gov.au/?p=3583]]>As January makes way for February, I take a moment to reflect on my first month as an artist-in-residence at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

It has been a fascinating journey so far, understanding how the Museum functions, what motivates the people that work there, and exploring what is the role that a Museum can play. I have been encountering the endless stories that are contained within the entire National Historical Collection and thinking about how I might go about traversing some of these things during my time here.

A reoccurring driver in a number of my past projects has been memory. For example, in 2012 I presented a project called ‘Roadside Frequencies’. This project was held in a paddock by the side of the Sturt Highway between Narrandera and Wagga in the Riverina region of New South Wales.

It was a performance for unsuspecting traffic in which dancer Victoria Hunt (see photograph above) was perched on the wall of one farm dam, and I was on the other bank. I had installed an upright piano which was delivered there on the back of a ute by local farmers Garth and Graham Strong. My piano was mic’d up and attached to a high powered radio transmitter which hijacked the radios of passing cars. An interruption to a long trip, a tiny anomaly in a repeating landscape, a hiccup in a deep breath.

Victoria and I improvised for over an hour for a large audience of passersby who all stopped, took photos, beeped their horn or yelled out of their windows enthusiastically.

This project was about creating an installation using music and dance, but more importantly it was about memory. In a landscape that is being reduced to large-scale industrialised agricultural process which remove people from the land, this project was an opportunity to create new memories involving people out in the landscape.

The hope was that for people who came across this performance, this large paddock may now in some way, hold something more than the memory of it being a practical commodity, a factory floor, but also, something that holds the story of people, even inexplicable ones involving a piano and a dancer.

Memory theorists are broadly based in two camps. They argue about whether memory is relational or absolute. The relational side believe that memory ‘stores information about the relationships between objects and ideas, but not necessarily details about the objects themselves’. They believe that we construct a ‘representation of reality’ out of these known relations. The competing theory, or the Record Keeping Theory, argues that the memory is like a recorder, notating most of our experiences accurately.

As there is evidence to support both arguments, I like to take a non-binary viewpoint and explore, through my arts practice, the intriguing aspects of both theories.

By tapping into the known record keeping part of memory as well as exploring the relational side, I am able to marry fact with emotion with some space left over for dreaming. Dreaming about what it all might mean, or dreaming of new interpretations.

And in the case of my time at the Museum, how do I take all of this information that I uncover, both factual and emotional, and decipher it into something that includes my interpretation, my viewpoint, my DNA. And is that even warranted or ethical?

The engine of the PS Enterprise

I have spent a great amount of time on the Paddle Steamer Enterprise during January. Looking through the Museum collection at relevant items from the vessel. Reading documents, letters and postcards from its time on the river system. I have been fascinated by the many different stories and roles that the Enterprise has fulfilled as an explorer, a shop, a tourist attraction, a hero during environmental disasters.

However, it is the role as a home that is intriguing me at the moment. The stories of the Creager family raising two children on board, their possessions and memories. The mother, Hilda, sewing pajamas on board the boat with her old Singer sewing machine to send to soldiers during World War One. The father finding an old beat up fishing basket and refashioning it into a babies bassinet. The kids inventing games to while away the hours on the boat, and the daughter Jocelyn talking about when the family eventually moved onto land in Mildura, how she had trouble sleeping at night without the gentle rocking of the boat (and how the new owners of the boat immediately installed stabilisers so the boat no longer gently rocked in that manner, so it was more like a building on land).

Hilda Creager was one of only a very small number of women who had their own fishing license, which is of real poignancy at the moment, as in 2015 we are celebrating both the 40th anniversary of International Women’s Day and also thinking about the role of women during this centenary of World War One.

Working with the volunteers who maintain the Enterprise at the National Museum lets me connect first hand to the vessel’s current life. The Enterprise is maintained by a group of retired men with various practical skills, knowledge and enthusiasm who are working with the Museum to keep this boat alive.

I have spent time on board preparing for my performance on February the 28th, see:

But I am also searching for something more, for ways in which to unlock the sound within the structure, to enable tones to be heard that hold the weight of time in their timbre, their pitch, and to create a melody and rhythm that isn’t part of record keeping fact, but is an extension of representational memory making, an extension of the boat’s own history, its current life and its intersection with me.

In my initial tour of the Museum collection, in one of the repositories, I was shown part of the Australian Institute of Anatomy collection of comparative anatomy. Thousands of human and animal specimens preserved in jars that were once a part of the Australian Institute of Anatomy, and which now reside in the collection at the National Museum.

On this visit I didn’t have the opportunity to see the human specimens. However, when viewing the animal specimens I had a strong sense of connection, of there being something human about them. Interest in how species relate to each other is one of the areas of interest of Senior Curator Kirsten Wehner and it was fascinating to spend some time talking to her about her interest in the collection.

My experiences when viewing the collection were :

* The “special feeling” that I was looking at something taboo;
* Having not eaten meat for 25 years, I see a connection between humans and animals as living things, so my connection to animal species in a jar could still relate to them as living beings;
* My fascination with a living form being reduced to a specimen and seeing this as some sort of metaphor for a futility of life, government policy, environmental and community management;
* That feeling of “more”. I want to see more and be pushed further, not quite squirmy, not quite scary, but fascinating;
* The beauty of being able to look at for example, an echidna’s brain, which in a jar looks much like I would image a shrunken human brain to look;
* My fascination with there being specimens of “War Wounds” and “Abnormalities”;

I discussed my encounter with the specimens with artist Duke Albada and she talked about travelling overseas and seeing as tourist attractions the corpses of world leaders or important historical figures, and that although masses of time has passed, and you have paid an entry fee, and are potentially in a long queue, you can still sense the human in the specimen in the jar.

I am looking forward to revisiting the collection, talking more to Kirsten about her thoughts and research, and wondering about what links their are between my interest in Arts/Health and a collection of comparative anatomy.

For now, I am happy photographing the specimens and giving them human titles.

Here is #1 in the series:

I Love You, Your Brains Are Delicious.

By coincidence, the day of my meeting with Kirsten to discuss the comparative anatomy collection, I spent the morning at the ‘In The Flesh’ exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, with the works of Piccinini, Mueck, and others.

What an exhibition, these life-like sculptures which convey so much emotion as well as so much realistic representation. I’m sure I saw them twitch, and I’m sure one of the sculptures was my grandmother. It looked at me in that certain way.

Finally during January, I have had discussions about the role of the Museum. As a research facility, a keeping place, an events venue. Should it be driven by research, audience numbers, or some other criteria?

The same discussion happens in the arts. Do you place more value in audience numbers than experimentation? If arts funding is aligned with audience numbers then is that to the detriment of experimentation and risk taking or the creation of difficult artworks?

These questions exist in many sectors across various institutions. How do we get this balance right? In the case of the Museum, how to balance the necessary research that can be gleaned from the past and present? What role can the Museum play in placing alternatives, options and research at the forefront of a visitor experience and the national debate? How can our national institutions contribute to worldwide conversations about our future thorough rigorous analysis, and how can this be done in a way that engage not just an academic audience, but the general public?